Co-workers at National Review remember a cheery young woman with a gift for friendship. And Sherry Weaver, who met Gallagher on their sons’ first day in kindergarten at P.S. 321, in Park Slope, moved in with Gallagher and Patrick after her third marriage fell apart, in 1992. Weaver remembers a crowded and happy house, filled with guests, many of them from the conservative movement. Charles Bork was often there, and sometimes stayed over.

Weaver says that Gallagher is one of the kindest people she has ever met, and that Gallagher was happy to blend their families for months on end. “She housed my two children and me for seven months,” Weaver told me in an email. “But it was not in the spare bedroom or the family room downstairs in some out-of-the-way space that would not interfere with her life. No, she lived in a small two-bedroom house, so we slept in her bed and she slept on the couch. She slept on the couch for seven months! Who would do that? And she did it with grace and generosity. She paid all the bills, gave me some work that I did horribly, in order to give me money. She did all the cooking and nurtured us with unbelievable kindness. She was never grumpy or out of sorts. My children and I were completely traumatized, and this time with Maggie was a time of healing for us.”

And:

The political writer Jonathan Rauch, the author of “Gay Marriage” and a prominent supporter of same-sex marriage, was a classmate of Gallagher’s at Yale, although he did not know her there. I ask him what he thinks motivates Gallagher. “I don’t believe she’s a homophobic bigot who hates gay people,” Rauch tells me. “She often says she didn’t want to get involved in the gay marriage debate. She says it found her. She is not like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association or Focus on the Family — she wasn’t involved in antigay stuff. She says she had been working to improve, strengthen marriage, and just as she was getting somewhere, this comes along. I have no reason to disbelieve her. She has always been good to me and my husband, Michael. She doesn’t say we’re sick, or ‘Which one of you is the woman?’ or that other stuff on talk radio.

“On the other hand, her arguments aren’t that good, and she is a very smart person. She thinks we won’t survive this last fatal blow to the family and its values, and that makes no sense to me. I wonder if it’s some type of panic. But I do not know the answer to your question.”

Anybody who thinks Maggie is a horrible, mean, nasty person — as distinct from being wrong on this issue — should reconsider. Also, if you think Gallagher got involved in the same-sex marriage fight because it interested her, think again; for Gallagher, it’s all part of a broader fight to preserve traditional marriage, one that stems from her own painful experience with single motherhood.

The far more interesting point — interesting to Oppenheimer, and just plain interesting — is that Gallagher really does think impersonally about this issue, in the sense that she takes no pleasure at all from making gay people unhappy with her stance. Read Oppenheimer’s piece; her response to his question about whether or not the sight of gay people happy together makes her happy is exactly right, from a Catholic point of view (which I happen to share): it is not an occasion of happiness to see people taking pleasure in things that are ultimately disordered. One can certainly understand why same-sex couples would be happy — I certainly do, and wish no one any ill — and at the same time think that the thing that pleases them will, in the long run, be bad for all of us. I feel exactly the same way about my heterosexual friends whose sexual conduct lies outside the moral order, as I see it. Mark says he finds it easier to relate to Evangelical opponents of same-sex marriage than to the cerebral Catholic Gallagher:

It is far easier for me to understand evangelical Christians who oppose same-sex marriage because they are worried about America sinking further into a toxic pit of sin. Unlike Gallagher, they at least are profoundly moved, in their own way, by the plight of gay- and lesbian-led families. They are not cool about it.

I think I get where Mark is coming from here, but I would just respond by asking why finding what a group of people believe and do to be disordered and socially deleterious requires feeling passionate about it? Remember Mike Huckabee’s great line? “I’m conservative, I’m just not angry about it.”

To lay all my cards on the table, I think Maggie Gallagher is one of the bravest people in our public life, but I am not as optimistic as she is about gay marriage. In the short run, we social conservatives are going to lose this thing. But in the long run, I believe she’s right. Look at this conclusion from the Oppenheimer piece:

Those would seem to be the hard facts, the evidence on which pure thought would operate. But for Gallagher these facts are temporal, contingent and ultimately meaningless. They just appear to be facts. In an email two months after our first conversation, she explains why her opponents are mistaken: “One of the lessons I learned as a young woman from the collapse of Communism is this: Trying to build a society around a fundamental lie about human nature can be done, for a while, with intense energy (and often at great cost); but it cannot hold.” Same-sex marriage is just a big lie, she believes, like Communism. It is weak at its foundations, like the Iron Curtain. It may get built, she seems to concede — in 10 years, or 20, there may be more states that recognize same-sex marriage, more shiny, happy couples raising rosy-cheeked, well-adjusted children, children who play with dogs and go to school and fall from jungle gyms and break their arms, children often adopted after being abandoned by the heterosexuals who did not want them or could not care for them — but in time (big time, geological time, God time) the curtain will be pulled back, or it will fall. Because it has to. It cannot be otherwise. Because a son, as Maggie Gallagher will tell you, needs a dad.

This conclusion calls to mind the question I raised yesterday, about how one can tell the difference between an ideologue and someone who is simply highly principled. The historical analogy Gallagher cites is telling, and useful. In 1917, you might have said, “Yes, the Tsar made a hash of things, but this Bolshevik Revolution is not going to work, because it’s based on a false understanding of what human beings are.” People might have said to you that you were heartless towards the plight of the impoverished Russian masses, that you were defending an unjust social order, that you were standing vainly athwart the tracks of history’s locomotive, yelling, ‘Stop!'”

But in time, you would have been exactly right. I think Gallagher is exactly right about the long run. I also think we as a society are going to have to learn this the hard way, over a long and difficult period. Maybe this too is a difference between an ideologue and a principled person: one’s time frame.

“People in Europe married for hundred of years before anybody thought that the state should keep track of marriages. It is almost as silly as saying that I am alive because city hall gave me a birth certificate.”

Polygamists in rural Utah are “married” to their extra wives in precisely the way you describe. The difference between legal marriage and “marriage” is that one exists as a social institution, legal partnership, and source of many benefits, while the other exists only in the minds of the wedded.

You keep missing my point: gays want to be legally married. They’ve been calling themselves “married” for years. They’d like to make it official. You can only do that by changing the law.

“Sean, we keep getting told that marriage is not about sexual intercourse and not about children. Why, then, should people not be able to consider themselves “married” to their dependents and other relatives? If all it’s about is the right to hold hands in the hospital–well, any parent would want that right in re: their child. And bring on the tax breaks! I have a large extended family and would like the government to approve of my loving and supportive relationship with each and every one of them and to give me income tax refunds accordingly.”

“Marriage is not about sex” is not the same thing as “sex is not an important part of marriage.” Is it necessary? Of course not. Neither are children, but they’re still important. Sex is at least important enough that legally a marriage hasn’t been “consummated” until sex has occurred. (This may be an arcane reference, but that has always been my understanding.) So obviously sex is supposed to happen at least once, sometimes even accompanied by the display of a bloody sheet to the still-partying guests.

Since we have laws prohibiting sexual activity with those unable to consent (minors, the infirm, animals), nonhuman and too closely related by blood, it follows that expanding the use of the word “marriage” to include homosexuals would not alter those laws. As far as polygamy is concerned, I don’t see how limiting marriage to “two people” doesn’t cover that. Besides, we have laws against polygamy too. They are separate issues. Please stop pretending they are the same thing.

SSM is not, at root, about tax breaks. The existence of tax breaks for everyone but them is evidence of unequal treatment under the law, but when a homosexual wants to marry the love of his life, he’s not doing it for money. He’s doing it for the same group of reasons every heterosexual does. (And he’s certainly not doing it for sex–he can have that already.)

I am also very sorry about what your ex-wife did. That’s possibly the most horrible thing that I can imagine – it makes me sick to even think about it – and I’m sorry for presuming that you were the one that violated your marriage. That was wrong, and I apologize.

NB: I already said as much in my original post: “First, let me say that I am sorry that Sean’s marriage ended, and I fully acknowledge that it might have been totally out of his control (people leave their spouses all the time even when their spouses haven’t done anything wrong).” I am not making excuses for insulting Sean – goodness knows, a disclaimer doesn’t get you off the hook for being totally presumptuous. I am just trying to point out that I didn’t, and don’t, think that every person who ends up divorced has no respect for the institution of marriage.

@economista: Thank you. Please don’t think that I imagine you to be some sort of wicked person. The reason one isn’t supposed to talk about politics, sex or religion is that people can’t keep from getting worked up about it. SSM is batting 1.000 on those measures. And we live in highly divisive times.

I ought to have addressed your disclaimer in my response, which would have been essentially what you said (“a disclaimer doesn’t get you off the hook”) so thank you for that as well.

My hope is that we can all remember that there are real human beings behind these names on comment threads (and in those groups of people we so blithely vilify when our political ire is raised). I’ve experienced personal tragedy, but so has everyone I know above the age of about 25. Another thing I think I know about people is that we all contain multitudes, and inevitably frustrate attempts to place us in convenient boxes.

I’d love to see more care paid to these things, but given my remark above re: topics you’re not supposed to talk about, my plea for civility reads a bit like “standing athwart history, yelling stop!” Crap. That never seems to work. 😉

“You keep missing my point: gays want to be legally married. They’ve been calling themselves “married” for years. They’d like to make it official. You can only do that by changing the law.”

Sorry I think you missed my point too:
1) The SSM rhetoric is that we are forbidding “loving homosexual couples” from tying the knot and living happily thereafter. That’s not about making it official. It is about the substance of marriage.
2) Since the official recognition is not intrinsic to marriage, it is an instrument of public policy that serves public purposes. What is the public purpose of recognizing people living together if it has nothing to do with producing children? Why should it reserved to people in romantic relationships and not to my two old ants (who are not blood relatives) who live together?

Don’t ask me: I am against no-fault divorce. In fact, if I were emperor of the world civil marriage would be a truly binding contract and people like Mr. Kind would be seriously penalized for failing to keep their committments.

Carlo, it doesn’t seem to me that you bolster your argument by being opposed to no-fault. We’re 40 years into no-fault, and there has never been a credible effort to repeal it. I don’t see it going away.

No-fault is the institutionalization of the radical redefinition of marriage.

Homosexuals did not destroy marriage, heterosexuals did. The demand for same-sex marriage is a symptom, not a cause, of the deterioration of marriage. By far the most direct threat to the family is heterosexual divorce. “Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage,” writes family scholar Bryce Christensen. “It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it.”

Carlo,
“That’s not about making it official. It is about the substance of marriage.”

It’s about both, actually. Which is not to say that a “marriage” can’t be loving, committed, and whatever other adjectives you want to ascribe to it absent legal sanction, but it’s still not a true marriage as far as our laws are concerned. If your marriage didn’t include the civil benefits and societal recognition of equality that it does, you would wonder why the law was singling you out too (I don’t know if you’re married, but you know what I mean).

“Since the official recognition is not intrinsic to marriage”

But for legal purposes, it is. And that’s what homosexuals are seeking: legal marriage.

“What is the public purpose of recognizing people living together if it has nothing to do with producing children? Why should it reserved to people in romantic relationships and not to my two old ants (who are not blood relatives) who live together?”

As mentioned (or at least inferred) upthread somewhere, eunuchs, the frigid, the barren, the blank-shooters (full disclosure: I’ve had a cocktail or so, but at least I’m a happy drunk) and those beyond fertile age are all perfectly free to marry, so clearly children aren’t a necessary reason for marriage laws.

As for “public purpose,” isn’t fulfilling the promise of equal treatment under the law public purpose enough? On some level marriage laws are there to strengthen the family, but on another level, aren’t they also there because people want to marry? This strikes me as an individual rights issue: if our country is no longer going to claim that homosexuality is illegal, then the rest of the laws that have kept homosexuals separate from society should necessarily fall. Especially if they have to do with institutions that are genuinely vital to our culture.

But I get the sense we’re talking at cross purposes. I’m sure I’ve missed your point again. 🙂

I think you just conceded my point: that no-fault divorce was a radical re-definition of marriage and that gay-marriage is just the final sanction. Since I think the “new definition” makes no sense, I consistently oppose the whole package.

You think consistency does not bolster my case? I think reality will bolster my case. In many European countries young people do no care to marry any longer. In the US 40% of children are born out of wedlock. Why enter into a civil contract that basically means nothing? If I had to do it again I would register my wife as a domestic partner for insurance purposes and get married only in Church, which is the only part I care about. Somebody said that the last Communist on earth will be a Jesuit. I predict that the last people to get a civil marriage will be a lesbian couple somewhere who always demed of wearing a white dress at city hall (or two white dresses)

Cannoneo: I think it will start to unravel when people realize that it really does embolden other interest groups whose vision would have an even worse impact. We didn’t get here overnight, and by that I mean I think it would be inconceivable (no pun intended) to have reached this point without things like mass-produced contraceptives and no-fault divorce. When you see the connections, it’s like having looked at your fingers your entire life and suddenly having a revelation that they all belong to the same hand. I think there will be a lot of damage and fallout before people start to holler, “Whoa, hit the brakes!”

“whatever flaws you find, would be miniscule compared to the dysfunction we already accept in broken straight homes”

WHO accepts it? It may be well-established, but I would not call it acceptable, and would hesitate to call it irreversible. That said, there *is* a need to choose one’s battles, and if one can’t take on many threats at once, it is better to deal with the new and imminent threat so it doesn’t compound the old, entrenched one. There’s a delightful expression in the financial world that I use as a metaphor: “don’t throw good money after bad money.”

I’m not buying it.
It’s time Maggie Gallagher moved on.
The war for Marriage Equality is over.
We won it when we stopped hating ourselves for being who we were born to be
We won it when we realized we deserved the same rights as everyone else
We won it when we formed committed loving couples
My 6 nephews and 1 niece don’t remember a time when they didn’t have two gay uncles
The best man at my oldest nephew’s wedding was raised by two women
We won it when we came out to our friends, our families and our co-workers.
Yes, you can dig in your sensible heels and slow the progress a bit,
But It really comes down to how you want to be remembered by history
Do you want to be George Wallace, a bigot so reviled that even a crippling assassination attempt couldn’t garner him public sympathy, or JFK a President who showed us you don’t have to belong to a minority to believe in and fight for their rights.
If you were really concerned about the state of marriage in this country you’d spend some of your organizations millions on finding a way to lower the huge divorce rate or to boost the dropping rate of nuptuals as more and more straight couples decide not to get married. But instead you position yourself against growing public support for Marriage Equality that even your well-financed propaganda cannot stop
Maggie Gallagher your campaign smells like sour grapes. How did a woman who raised one child out of wedlock, and a second one with a man she never married in your church, and now is separated from, become the figurehead for the National Organization for Marriage? Was it “If I can’t have a successful marriage nobody can”? The divorce rate in Massachusetts has gone down since the state gave everyone the right to marry. Your campaign defies reason and just comes off spiteful.
Most young people today consider Marriage Equality a no-brainer
Your demographic is old
The future belongs to our youth, I know they have the right idea.
“Father Knows Best” was a TV show….we can’t go back to it because it was never really there